Last September the Arduino blog stated that the 32-bit Due (beta version) would be released in December of 2011. Did the Arduino team in fact miss a critical milestone, or was the release date in that blog misspelled and they meant December of 2012 or 2013? Or perhaps the project was abandoned altogether? Whatever the issue, I think the user community, students, inventors, tinkerers, makers, distributors and vendors, in all countries here and abroad, deserve an explanation from Arduino. Delays are commonplace and excusable, especially when dealing with radical departures, like 8-bit to 32-bit ARM processors. But what is more radical is for Arduino to keep the whole world in the dark. Quid accidit?

In the past the Arduino team was very closed mouth about advance notice of releasing new hardware boards, often with just a week or two of notice. The Due was an exception to that rule, and I think they wanted to make a 'bigger' splash at the Maker fair. So now it's a month late, not so bad but an update on 'new' release date would be nice.

"Open Source after we make all the decisions and run prototypes with a select few, and then we'll publish what we did that you COULD change if you were interested in convincing the User Base that your idea was better."

The benevolent dictator model works because members are free to take the code and create alternative projects. In fact, this ability to fork is very important to the health of open source communities, it ensures that those involved in project governance strive to make the right decisions for the community,

This is not the case with Arduino. The fact that it is "open hardware" and most of the community consists of beginners means that there is little pressure on the Arduino team to listen to the community. There is no threat of their authority being overturned by users forking the project.

I don't see this situation changing as it did with early projects I was involved with. I worked on BSD Unix at Berkeley in the 1970s because control of Unix by AT&T was unacceptable. This finally evolved to Linux.

Not sure if I agree with your assessment of the Arduino situation as it relates to 'open hardware'. I think the differences in developing hardware Vs software are fundamentally different. Not even sure I have read a good definition of what 'open source hardware' even means. Just publishing the schematics could be considered one form of 'open hardware' and many project authors have done that in the past well before open source software project became popular or common. Perhaps it's releasing all design files including PCB files used to 'copy' the PCB design? I'm also not so sure that hardware development lends itself to collaborative design as easily as software development.

So whatever a correct or even useful definition of open source hardware is, I don't think that the Arduino as a company ever attempted to engage in an initial collaborative effort to design their hardware. The Due project seems to be the first where they stated they were or did release initial beta versions of the hardware to selected people for feedback before the final design is to be released for that project. We, to the best of our knowledge have not heard from any parties privy to the Due design effort.

Ultimately, the "Open Source" argument is academic. What we have here is a case of making a promise at a large venue with high visibility (Maker Faire) and then standing up the world without explanation.

I still believe Arduino will do the right thing and update the user community, the vendors and distributors. Because I'd like to think Arduino is like Da Vinci, not Berlusconi.

I think one of the reasons for the delay is this collaboration with ATMEL. "Open Source" cultures do not mix well with regimented, secretive, proprietary, corporate cultures like ATMEL.

We know we aren't going to see the VHDL from ATMEL or FTDI, or the internal schematics of the voltage regulators.

We DO expect to see how those many documented subsystems are put together to make a DUE.

Many have forked the earlier hardware Arduinos with good results.

The Arduino IDE System consists of subsystems, many from ATMEL, for which the source code is not available, plus various (I think) open source components. The IDE has been hacked pretty deeply by a few, like Ardblock (https://github.com/taweili/ardublock).

Hi, If you're interested in following the development of ArduBlock, mentioned above, there is now a discussion group here:http://groups.google.com/group/ardublock?hl=en

For those of us who want a widely collaborative development effort, I don't think Arduino is gonna be it.

A benevolent dictatorship has always been the most efficient form of government and of project management for that matter. As long as the bloke at the top stays sane and knows what he's doing

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For those of us who want a widely collaborative development effort, I don't think Arduino is gonna be it.

This is one reason I like the DuinoMite project. I think the hardware was a done deal by the designer but the software is certainly collaborative.

Maybe people aren't that interested in collaborating on hardware, I only got one response to my call to collaborate on a Due-like board and that was from a member that is mostly a software type (actually that was good because I'm mostly hardware). While it's easier in many ways to just do your own thing, however you usually get a better product if there are a few minds on the job.

I suppose a company can not be PURELY open source software & hardware, otherwise making a profit would be very difficult, especially with the globalized economy. The Chinese will always make it faster, cheaper, and although not the best, good enough.

Plenty of bootstrapped microcontroller modules are out in the market. Why did Arduino catch on so immensely? My guess: low cost, the choice of a common language (C), floating point math, analog-to-digital converters (missing in basic stamp) & other peripherals, a very good forum, and "open source". But the same can be said about leaflabs.com, so what is it about Arduino? How did they make it into Radio Shack stores?

I suppose a company can not be PURELY open source software & hardware, otherwise making a profit would be very difficult,

Adafruit.com says they made a lot of money while everything they sell is open source. There was a good New York Times article about it.

Why would I use the OPenSource info to build and populate an Arduino board when I can buy one for less than $20?? If I want to make a modified fork of that design to provide special functions, and I am going to make 500+ of them, that's different (I'm thinking of doing that right now)...